Before you scold an employee, try posing an ideal question in which you let the employee ponder how to do better.
Leaders & Managers
From the nitty gritty of daily management to addressing your aspirations of leadership, this section for leaders & managers tells you how to make strong leadership decisions, build effective teams, delegate and stay above the everyday management muddle.
Get tips, strategies, tool and advice on: performance reviews, preventing workplace violence, best-practices leadership, team building, leadership skills, people management and management training.
You already know that it’s smart to empower employees by nurturing their strengths and letting learn and grow on the job. The last thing you need is another book on the beauty and benefits of fair, enlightened management. To its credit, Leveraging People and Profit (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998) doesn’t preach.
No one likes having to nag their employees. But if you have justifiable reasons to doubt whether your instructions will be followed, then silently hoping your employees follow through isn’t much of a strategy.
As employers experiment with all kinds of new incentive plans in an effort to motivate workers, gainsharing has proven particularly effective.
Your employees want a more casual work environment, but you feel this looks unprofessional to clients.
Managing an employee who is either hot or cold
Your two bosses can hardly stand each other, and you're in the middle.
Some managers hire temps and then pray that the newcomers don’t get too far behind or make too many mistakes. But there’s a better way.
You can’t help it. Without trying, you form opinions of others. When managing your staff, the big question becomes, “Are my impressions correct?”
Quiet employees are often excellent workers, but you may want to break through their silence and encourage them to share ideas and update you more regularly on their progress. If you find it hard to get them to open up to you, don’t keep trying to launch conversations.
